A financial services provider typically offers a customer several different channels for accessing accounts and account information and for executing transactions using funds held in the accounts. Fraud perpetrators often attempt to use the customer's identity information and electronic device information to steal the customer's funds (ID fraud and IP fraud, respectively). The financial services provider, therefore, undertakes to identify prospective fraudulent transactions.
For example, when the customer initiates a transaction (whether involving fund transfer or information exchange), the financial services provider may execute an authentication process to ascertain that the individual who initiates the transaction is actually the customer. The financial services provider also may execute a risk management process to identify and reject prospective transactions that are likely to be fraudulent.
Because the financial institution does not scrutinize every prospective transaction sufficiently to remove all risk, a fraud perpetrator may gain illicit access to a portion of the customer's identity information. The perpetrator may, therefore, be able to satisfy requirements of the authentication process.
Also, the perpetrator may exploit the existence of the several different channels to make it more difficult for the financial services provider to perform the risk analysis. For example, the perpetrator may steal the customer's identity information in connection with an online transaction, use a telephone channel to establish account permissions and, then, withdraw customer funds using an ATM. If the financial services provider utilizes risk analysis and fraud detection that are not sensitive to cross-channel customer behavior and, therefore, cross-channel fraudulent activities, the customer and the financial services provider may be more vulnerable to cross-channel fraud.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide apparatus and methods for adaptively adjusting authentication criteria in conformance with risk exposure, know, customer behavior, or a combination thereof.
It also would be desirable, therefore, to provide apparatus and methods for reducing cross-channel fraud.